All we have in life, all we have that is true to us and can NEVER be disputed, are feelings.

“I feel this way, I can’t help it.”

“You shouldn’t feel that way. It’s not right, it’s not true.”

Feelings are always true. They reveal everything there is to know about a person. All their fears, their hopes, dreams, attachments – everything. Everything that can be learned about who you are can only be deciphered by looking into your feelings. Even if they have no basis (like all fear), feelings are vital into self-awareness.

I write to clarify my thoughts. I write using feelings. It takes guts because the first thing most of us learn as kids is how not to feel. Organic feelings are improper, disruptive towards others and selfish.

So right off the bat, we are stifled and trained. If we experience a lowly feeling, instead of dealing with it, we change direction to avoid it. We avoid it because we feel that it’s not true, we don’t want it to be true.

The only thing we know for certain is how and what we feel.

I have to be in work for 4:30, so I’m laying in bed vaping my e cig and trying to figure out, or more accurately, clarify my feelings. What exactly is it that I’m feeling right now at this very moment?

Now remember, feelings are attached to the body. What does your body want?

The body works in momentum. Once it starts moving, so do your feelings. Once they grow and materialize through-out your day, good or bad, let them come. If you follow my blog, follow my insights and incorporate them, you’ll intuitively know that all feelings move you in the direction of self-expression.

Always towards self-expression.

Somewhere in the bible states that a lit candle should never be placed under a table.

You are the lit candle! It’s your job to shine!

As I said many times before, the point to life is to become your higher, stronger self. This can be achieved by helping others. You help others by expressing your true feelings.

Don’t be afraid to love people and show it. If you hide it, it becomes another game – another pattern and structure to work around. Love is just one example, but what it comes down to is this: Revealing yourself to others. There’s nothing to ever be ashamed of!

“But how? How do I go about doing it? Through art?”

Yes my friend, through art and by indirectly helping others. I say indirectly because to do it directly only results in enabling their fears further. Forming them into a stronger bond, a stronger bond to you. The best way to help someone is by living by example. How you changed your life, how you live your life becomes hope for them.

“But I’m not creative! I have no talent!”

Once the river in you free’s up and starts to flow, you will feel a rush of such creativity that you never experienced before. You bash down structures, ebbing fear and bring people hope.

A good friend always see’s the best in you. Always see’s your potential and gives you courage and strength.

Before you cringe in pain by saying, “but I have no friends that do that for me (sad face),” let me shed some light. A bad friend is still a friend.

A bad friend does the opposite by bringing you down to make them feel better about themselves. But if you keep seeing the best in your bad friend, you can ignore the rest. And hopefully in time, they will start seeing the same things you see in them and won’t have the need to bring you down. You raise them up to your level. Their games become fruitless and foolish.

Don’t grunt and say, “what-EV Melanie, the real world don’t work that way.”

Hear me out first.

Believe it or not, my mother (whom I absolutely love and have a great relationship with), was one of those “bad friends” that didn’t see my potential. She told me not to start my own business, told me not to get a drivers license because I’m not suited for it, told me not to go to college (which is a good thing actually [I’ll save that for another post]). She didn’t see or believe in my capabilities. So what do I do? I love her anyway! You don’t stop, NEVER stop loving anyone! Never give up on people.

By me achieving my goals, I in turn, indirectly helped her. I abolished her fears, her doubts, I never stopped caring or seeing the very best in her and can you guess what happened next? She believes in me, but not only of me – of herself and of her son and my father.

A bad friend is never really a bad friend. Don’t give up on anyone. Remember that 90% of the world lives in darkness, pain, suffering. A bad friend is part of that 90%. You can’t shut the world out as long as you have light to shed. Lift their veils! They’re the one’s needing it the most.

And in all honesty, I wouldn’t have undergone my adventures, I wouldn’t have taken ayahuasca, or known what it’s like reaching Santiago – I wouldn’t know so much today about life if it wasn’t for having “bad friends.”

So don’t weep, whine or pity yourself cause I tell you what, when you’re down, those bad friends will keep you down. They’ll keep pushing you down until you build up enough strength in yourself to learn humility. And with humility, all the real feeling in you is unleashed. Your self-worth is truly felt. Your belief and faith builds and compounds itself with the desire to understand, to grow, to build.

You become your stronger, higher self.

When you stifle yourself (your feelings), you limit your potential. Your attachments, fears, responsibilities, all that takes hold and puts you in a pattern of confinement. Holding you in place, directing the river in you to feed your limitations – giving them power, not you.

And because your power is given to your fears, you’re left with no power of your own. And so you take it from others by controlling them, by seeing the worst in them, by withholding love and attention as a way to keep you safe from harm and in the “power” zone. My mother wasn’t above any of this. And neither was my dear friend Amy.

It’s not real power when it’s stolen. It’s never real power when you have to hide yourself to stay “unharmed”. You’re really just harming yourself.

But after you face yourself, know who you are, face your fears, you become a person of substance. Nobody – and I mean NOBODY can touch you when you’re self reliant. Nobody.

Right now, I have a small life. A good life, nonetheless, but small. From here I can build. Live by example, love by example, write….by example.

11 responses to “A Lit Candle Should Never Be Put Under A Table”

Morning, Melanie! Love the post. I think all of life is finding what Aristotle called ‘the golden mean’ or the ‘middle way’ between hiding your light under a bushel and narcissism. You have to walk that camino yourself but just like others came and went along your path in Spain, so too in life. Hang with the ones that love and cherish you…

Oh good question! Wow they are totally separate. I think they care about me, but I know they don’t think anything good about me. That’s the confusing part. I know for sure Amy loved me but she still put me down. My mom definitely loves me and always has.

So, I don’t worry too much about it. All I can do is be kind and let go of fear. Everything will fall into place as it should.

You have such a unique way of thinking and expressing yourself that you could write a very telling but humerous book, and you have no problem getting a lot of words together.

I think feelings are about one’s state of mind, such as happy or sad. I don’t feel that you are pretty, I think that you are pretty. I don’t feel you are talented, I think you are talented.

You might consider that people who love us don’t put us down. They try to build us up. I can love someone and still disapprove of the way they live their lives, but if I am putting them down, then they should question my love. Love is shown by actions way more than words.

Feelings can be so much more revealing than just a fleeting state of mind, cause eventually that feeling always finds a way to creep back, unless we find the source of the feeling and understand the reason behind it. It’s more like trusting your gut and feeling with your whole body, not just in the head and what chemicals in your brain are igniting, or where your thoughts are taking you. You can totally feel a pretty person if their pretty is on the inside and not so much on the out. Like the ugly duckling.

This is when the mind is in charge, when thoughts take over. Ignore the thoughts, and trust your feelings, you know? It’s like dancing. The music may sound pretty, but you feel it in your body too. You mesh with the experience and the feeling, and so you dance with it.

It’s just my way of looking at it, it’s not the only way or the right way, but it feels pretty awesome :D

I need to figure out what to write a book about. That’s the hardest part. Once I get cracking at it I won’t want to stop.

I don’t think people realize when they put others down. They’re not able to see that side of them, it’s all subconscious and denial, and then judgement and blaming others. But once the heart is tapped into, all that other crap falls away and it becomes another experience feeling directly from the heart. The only way to tap into anyone’s heart is through self-expression.